« Kevin Ngo

Poker Session #6 - Russell Westbrook Played Here Yesterday

11 Feb 2014

Russell Westbrook, with the OKC Thunder in town, played poker at the Encore last Monday evening, and I missed it. I went to play poker Tuesday evening and heard the news, saw the pictures. Westbrook, injured, had nothing better to do to play a $30 tournament with his $18mil/year salary. If it weren’t for the snowstorm and icy roads, I would’ve played against him. Westbrook, 3x NBA all-star, arguably top 10 in the world when healthy. Also brought in one his girls. Shit. Well, at least I got to bump fists with the guy who bumped fists with Westbrook. That counts for something, right? As consolation, I took 4th in a $1500 guaranteed for $230. Yet to have a losing session continuing from Poker Session #5.

6pm $500 Guaranteed - Busted

After a couple weeks of yearning for some cards, I was a bit loose-passive, incorrectly overlimping due to “pot odds” and leaking chips post-flop with marginal hands. AA proved to be my demise in this game.

I had AA and raised 3x. Two callers. We all got it all-in on the drawy flop: me with the overpair, one with top pair, one with a small set. The set held so I rebought. Same guy later, I ran my KK into AA pre-flop despite my gut yelling “he has aces!”, but I can’t fold KK preflop. Busto.

8pm $1500 Guaranteed Freezeout - 4th for $230

I went deep in this one. I was chip leader early but dwindled as the blinds raised. I became average stack then shortstack, but was able to keep my stack on life support with late position steals. I was able to last until 4th with a small stack as the smaller shortstacks got eaten up. Once it got four-handed, it was a boring game of blind steals. I doubled up with AJ over 44 in a blinds war. I busted trying to steal with K3o on the button when the SB showed with AA. Good game.

Intersting hand that would have set me up for a possible victory had I won. I had A4o in the cut-off. I raise, BB calls. Flop goes T54, BB shoves out of position. He seemed to be a TAG but a tricky one. He pushed me off the previous two hands, both times showing TT. One of those being a small blind limp-resteal. I had the feeling I was being outplayed with this shove but my pair felt good. We were both deep enough to go another street. I ended up folding but maybe I should have called. If he did have a legitimate hand, he would’ve have checked to me, and I would be expected to fire a cbet with my TAG image. Overpairs, TPTK, sets all had enough room to slowplay. So his range was really polarized to bluffs and marginal hands.

Session Conclusion